James L. Brooks

Posted by Metro Biographyon November 17, 2018 / Last Modified on November 21, 2018

James L. Brooks was born on 1940-05-09 at Brooklyn, New York City, New York, United States. His net worth is $500 Million. He is American born Director, producer, screenwriter. He has been seen in movies "The Simpsons Movie" (2007), "As Good as It Gets" (1997), "I'll Do Anything" (1994), "Spanglish" (2004), "The War of the Roses" (1989), "How Do You Know" (2010).

Academy Award for Best Director, for Best Writing, for Best Picture (1983), Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award (1987), Satellite Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy (1997), Golden Globe Award for Best Director, for Best Screenplay (1997), San Diego Film Critics Society Award ...

Quotes of James L. Brooks

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Quote

1

[accepting the Best Picture Oscar for Terms of Endearment (1983)] It took a long time to get the picture made and this community has been generous to this picture from long before it was made. There was a lot about every studio turning it down; I think it's much more significant that a Hollywood studio made it and that [the] Hollywood studio was flexible and that the studio ended up happy that it made it--I think that's significant. too, that there was an audience for this picture.

2

People used to say, you know you're in the hands of a good screenwriter when you're not aware of the writing. I've never subscribed to that. In Juno (2007), suddenly you're riveted by the fact that people haven't talked like that before. I think the treat is always when you are aware of the writing.

3

I saw Annie Hall (1977) with a group of people working in comedy and television. We were all stunned. Stunned. It was like watching a spaceship land. That something that funny could also be that beautiful.

4

[in 2014] The great thing in television, usually the writer's in charge. It's the one place. In movies it's certainly not true. But in television it's true and there's something--the inmates running the asylum and all that. And there's something to that. Right now, there are so many great shows that are truly authored. It's a place where writers are in charge. Right now, a lot of the great things we see each year will be on television.

5

[on being employed by a studio] Sometimes they give you so much rope you forget it's around your neck. But it always is. You feel it when they yank it.

6

[on I'll Do Anything (1994)] I wanted to do a Hollywood story. At the time it seemed to me, and it turned out to be a real miscalculation, to get the truth about Hollywood, the form had to be larger than life, a musical. I did a lot of strange things on that. Because of my background I went for actors on it and not singers. I'm in love with actors. I had great musical people, the best. I had Twyla Tharp as my choreographer. Prince as my songwriter. Sinéad O'Connor did one song, a beautiful song. And I went to work, and it was the first time I fell in love with my leading lady, who was this six-year-old magical child. And her mother was great--part of the movie was based on my experience with my own two daughters, and I sort of became a surrogate dad. I had all these other people around me that I loved and it was great. And then we went to our first preview. And it was a disaster. We had walkouts, it was awful. Then the worst thing of all happened--someone who saw it told somebody who told somebody who told the Los Angeles Times about what had happened, and then they came after the story. So now here I was trying to fix the film and I actually have the major home-town newspaper publish what had happened, and kill us dead in the water. And they made a story out of my odyssey, came to my next preview and it was just horrendous. So eventually I pared down the music, took almost all of it out. And you can speculate on a lot of things about why the picture didn't work. I'm a guy who started out in one form and changed it to another, but the movie played and people laughed, because I saw it with an audience. But it utterly failed commercially and I felt like I had let down a lot of people. It's my job to take it personally. When I ask people to join me and work with me, who else is responsible? But I haven't seen the movie in a long time and I still think it's a good movie.

7

While you're doing it, it is sort of a lonely kind of feeling, even though you are surrounded by so many people giving beyond the call. That's generally true of movies, there's a sense of urgency, people risking their tail, people working past exhaustion. That's what moviemaking is. It's lonely because you asked all of them to work that hard for this idea you had.

Quick Facts

Quick Facts of James L. Brooks

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Fact

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Along with Delbert Mann, Jerome Robbins, Robert Redford, Kevin Costner and Sam Mendes, he is one of only six people to win the Academy Award for Best Director for their directorial debut: Mann for Marty (1955), Robbins for West Side Story (1961) (which he co-directed with Robert Wise, Redford for Ordinary People (1980), Brooks for Terms of Endearment (1983), Costner for Dances with Wolves (1990) and Mendes for American Beauty (1999).

2

He was commissioned to do a screen adaptation of Terms of Endearment (1983) by wealthy businessman Norton Simon and his wife, the former actress Jennifer Jones, as a comeback vehicle for her. Brooks decided he didn't want to have to adapt the character of Aurora to a particular actress, and persuaded Paramount to buy the rights from the Simons. He cast Shirley MacLaine because she was the only actress who viewed the story as a comedy. When he won the screenplay Oscar, Brooks thanked Jennifer Jones Simon.

During the opening credits for some of the seasons of Mary Tyler Moore (1970), there is a scene of Mary filming by the one of the lakes in Minneapolis. During that scene, two men jog by--one of them is Brooks.

5

His laughter is heard in the studio audience of many shows he produced, especially Taxi (1978), in which his laughter is heard through all five seasons. It appears louder than any of the other audience members, sounding like a "Haw", sustaining the "Aw" sound.

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Was best man at Norman Pearlstine's and Nancy Friday's wedding.

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Won 19 Prime Time Emmy awards--more than any person in history. As producer he has won nine for The Simpsons (1989), three for Taxi (1978), three for Mary Tyler Moore (1970) and one for The Tracey Ullman Show (1987); as writer he won two for "Mary Tyler Moore" and one for "The Tracey Ullman Show".

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Member of the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Writers Branch) [2006-]

He is among an elite group of seven directors who have won Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay (Original/Adapted) Oscars for the same film. In 1984 he won all three for Terms of Endearment (1983). The other directors are Leo McCarey (for Going My Way (1944)), Billy Wilder (for The Apartment (1960)), Francis Ford Coppola (for The Godfather: Part II (1974)), Peter Jackson (for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)), Joel Coen and Ethan Coen (the brothers co-produced, co-directed and co-wrote No Country for Old Men (2007) with each other), and Alejandro G. Iñárritu (for Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)). Brooks is the only one to do so with his directorial debut and the only one to do so without collaborators in any of the three categories.

Trademarks of James L. Brooks

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Trademark

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Writes at least one character who is an obsessive-compulsive or has OCD (Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment (1983), Holly Hunter in Broadcast News (1987), Jack Nicholson in As Good as It Gets (1997), Téa Leoni in Spanglish (2004)).

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Frequently casts Jack Nicholson, Albert Brooks

3

Sharp-witted, acerbic sense of humor

Filmography

Filmography of James L. Brooks

Writer

Title

Year

Status

Character

The Simpsons

1989-2018

TV Series developed by - 619 episodes

Planet of the Couches

2016

TV Movie creator

Lego Dimensions

2015

Video Game characters created by - uncredited

The Simpsons Take the Bowl

2014

Video creator

The Longest Daycare

2012

Short written by

How Do You Know

2010

written by

The Simpsons Movie

2007

based on the television series "The Simpsons" developed by - uncredited / screenplay